When last we wrote we were in Panama City making do with the extreme weather and the havoc it was reaping on our plans. We were notified on Saturday morning that the other activity that we had booked prior to leaving the US, national park rain forest hiking and river rafting, was also canceled because of the rain storms of the preceding few days. So we spent that afternoon making inquires about other possible day trip options. The one that was the most interesting and had the fewest weather issues was a trip to the town of El Valle.

When the iPad was introduced a few months ago, I grappled with the decision of whether to buy one. It wasn’t a question of the technology, which I thought was really great, but whether it would be practical for me to have, given the cost. So I began to think how I would use it and, of course, taking it on the road was one of those considerations.

We are in Winnipeg, Manitoba for a four hour train stop on our journey from Toronto to Vancouver. This gives us the opportunity to get off the train and see the city. Darren is out running along the river and I am exploring the downtown area. We are about 33 hours from our train starting point of Toronto. Our time there was interesting to say the least.

We recently returned from a two week trip to South America, visiting Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. It was a tough journey, probably the most adventurous trip in several years that we have taken. We were actually on the ground for only 12 days and seeing four countries in that time was ambitious. What made it more so was the fact that we covered much of it overland, taking a 14 hour overnight bus, and then boarding other local buses for six hours and two hours, along with a 90 minute ferry ride. We also crossed four borders overland, exchanged money between each and had to rely on our high school Spanish throughout, which made things take longer and resulted in some comedic situations. I couldn’t help feeling at one point in the trip, however, that maybe I was getting too old for this.